Why Not Rockaway?

Why Not Rockaway?

The Arverne Urban Renewal Area has now lain fallow for more than 30 years. Every few years, politicians, among great hype and fanfare, run a new and spectacular plan onto the field. Everybody is invigorated; everybody is excited about the prospects. Three or four years later, however, the community learns that the plan is not to be and the cycle starts all over again.

Brighton Beach, on the other hand, had a large piece of land where the Brighton Beach Baths once stood. It was not public land, as the Arverne area is. It was private land and a private developer quickly took hold of the land and a project.

Today, there is a $250 million, 850-unit gated condominium, called the Oceana, on the land. It is the city’s largest privately funded market rate housing complex built in the last 50 years. Prices for the units range from the high $200,000’s for a two-bedroom duplex to $1 million for a penthouse unit. That is not subsidized housing, folks. It is just the kind of market rate housing that Rockaway needs on its beachfront.

Published reviews of the complex say that it brings "Manhattan-style glitz to a Brooklyn oceanfront..."

While we congratulate Brooklyn for its new development, we have to ask the most obvious question: